The success of a business hinges on the staff. You could have the most innovative business idea or product ever invested. Still, if you don’t have a team of knowledgeable, intelligent, and passionate staff, you will struggle to mark your industry.
If you’re already an entrepreneur, you have likely had plenty of bad hires before. You might even feel like you make nothing but bad hires, and it is putting the success of your company at risk. There is an ocean of talent out there. But you need to start taking the right steps towards finding them.
Carry Out Background Checks
One of the most significant causes of Bad Hires is that companies do not carry out background checks before employing candidates. While most staff you bring in will have the best intentions, others may look to take advantage, especially for fledgling companies.
Employees who come in with malicious intentions will put your business at risk, steal funds, or cause severe damage. They could also put your staff and customers in danger, and this can severely harm your company’s reputation. Anyone who has spent a long time in any industry knows how challenging this reputation can be to repair.
Create a Clear Job Description
You may not have needed to look at a job description in years that this doesn’t mean other people don’t. Job descriptions are the candidates’ first exposure to the role, so you must ensure that the description is clear and concise and provides enough information to attract the top talent.
Too many companies, especially those trying to appear modern and cool, will fill job descriptions with lines of useless jargon that skirts too much around the idea of what the job is without being precise. These descriptions are usually oversaturated with keywords, and there is nothing that defines what the job is. If you want a fresh-out-of-college applicant, this is ideal, but the best talent will pass on it.
Ask More Than Business Questions
Interviews are never fun or enjoyable. They come with stress, nervousness, and plenty of overthinking. While you need to get to the meat of what makes them a suitable candidate for the role, you don’t need to restrict your questions merely about the job.
It’s good to get to know the candidate on a more personal level, without getting too personal. This means discussing their hobbies or breaking the ice, which can make them more comfortable and will give you a better idea of who they are, allowing you to spot a difference between the Interview persona and their real persona.
You can even ask the candidate to take a personality test, such as the Leadership test to identify his/her internal character traits, goals, feelings, and behavioral tendencies.
Let Them Meet the Team
Teamwork is as crucial today as it ever was, so if you have managed to narrow down your candidate, it’s worth inviting them to spend a day with your team. This will help you get an idea of how well they fit into the company and its culture. You can get a decent idea of how someone will blend in with the rest of the office in an interview, but this does not tell the whole story.
Having them engage with the same people they will be working with will reveal more about them. It will also make everybody more comfortable around one another, while you can get feedback from the team about how they felt about the candidate, and this can help you make a decision.
Make Your Business a Fantastic Place to Work
You can’t attract the best talent if your business doesn’t seem to be the best place to work. A welcoming company culture, chances for progression, and a range of perks are things that people look for when finding a job.
As the work culture has evolved in recent years, you should also consider the importance of your staff’s work-life balance. People don’t want to be cooped up in an office all week long, so provide remote working or flexitime opportunities to give them the chance to take the kids to school or attend appointments.
Offer Further Learning
While some candidates will be happy in one position for the rest of their careers, others might not be so keen on this. Therefore, you need to provide the chance for further learning, which will improve their standing in the company, and even allow them to move onward and upward.
Depending on the nature of your business, you can encourage or help to fund online study at RMIT, which allows your staff to complete courses in their own time, or even take a few hours each week. You can also suggest management courses instead of degrees, which can help prepare them for the next step in their career.
Work With Institutions
Local universities have the best and brightest graduating every year. If you want to ensure your company can bring in the top talent, you should work with them, taking on interns or even hiring immediately following graduation.
You can engage with future employees at career fairs or workshops, and you might even be able to promote your business through the website or the newspaper if you want to catch attention early.
Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks
As a business owner, you’re used to taking risks. You can’t recognize when something is worth taking a chance, and this might be a potential employee, even if they don’t precisely meet the metrics outlined in the job description.
However, you can still give these people a chance, and they might turn out to be the best employee you’ve ever had. Whether it is someone with a criminal past or one looking to change careers, you can usually recognize their drive to succeed, and they will likely give you something different from the identikit applicants that normally walk through your door.
Best of the Best
A highly qualified and passionate staff who shares your vision and can complete tasks themselves is crucial to the business’s success. While you may still get candidates who are not suitable for the role, there will be a few diamonds for you to find within the rough. These are the people that could help boost your company and take it to the next level.
